The report from my visit last week to Colonoscopyville was a good one. No polyps or any other growths. I’m all clear till 2033.
The two main items on my mind are some changes in the medical procedure since my last colonoscopy 10 years ago; and frankly to brag a bit on the people at Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center. Everyone I came in contact with at the hospital did a fine job.
The biggest change in the routine was cleaning out the large intestine. Back in 2013, I had to drink this minty-flavored concoction that definitely worked, but after a while was literally hard to swallow.
This time around, the gastroenterology people prescribed some big white pills called Sutab. They are a combination of sodium sulfate, magnesium sulfate and potassium chloride. They defiitely worked, too.
You get to take these pills with water — lots of it. I started at 4 p.m. on Sunday, taking 12 pills with 16 ounces of water in 20 minutes. An hour later, I had to drink another 16 ounces of water by itself. And 30 minutes after that, yet another 16 ounces.
I had not eaten all day except for some lime-flavored Jell-O, and Sunday night I developed what felt like one of those caffeine headaches.
The doctor’s instructions said I could have a soft drink, so I had a Mountain Dew, recognizing full well that it might help the headache but would add another 16 ounces to my fluid intake.
Sadly, the headache lingered. I didn’t want to take any aspirin, so I just lay down until my next batch of Sutab pills and water at 2 a.m. Monday.
I didn’t finish all the water, just like 10 years ago. But between that and the Dew, I knocked back about 104 ounces in 12 hours. I was more than ready to go to the hospital.
Mary Ann and I got to Southwest about 9 a.m. It took about an hour before a nurse came to get us to bring us to a room. Even with that, I was still home before 1 p.m.
A couple of weeks ago at a McComb city board meeting, one of the selectmen said officials ought to find out why some local residents go elsewhere for their medical care.
That is a completely personal decision, but I suspect some people had a prior bad experience at the hospital, or “heard about” someone who did, or just don’t have confidence in a local business. It’s a free country. Everyone gets to decide for themselves.
I’ve had four outpatient procedures at Southwest in the past 12 years, all of which required mild general anesthesia: the two colonoscopies, shoulder surgery for a ruptured bursa sac in about 2011, and a prostate biopsy last year.
That’s not a large sample; I’m lucky to be relatively healthy. But it just needs to be said that each time, the people at the hospital were really nice and patient, and in my judgment the level of medical care was excellent.
You may think, well, they know you run the newspaper. If anybody knew that, they didn’t say it. Instead, at least two people, Dr. Ash Riad and one of the nurses, recognized Mary Ann from her years of teaching at Parklane.
She ate it up, and there was nothing I could do but lie in the hospital bed and watch her smile graciously at all the kind words.
I did thank two of the RNs for sticking with Southwest, as I have written stories about the staffing challenges hospitals have faced in recent years.
It turned out that one of the nurses in the room where Dr. Stephen Keith would perform the colonoscopy graduated from McComb in 2008. She said she remembered my two sons, who graduated in 2007 and 2009. Nice touch.
The anesthesia hit without warning. A nurse asked me to lift my hips to put a pad underneath, and the next thing I remember is waking up in my hospital room.
Ten years ago, it was a requirement that you had to pass gas after a colonoscopy before you could leave. I guess now they remove the air that inflates your colon, or you’re still asleep while passing.
Everything went well. When a local business does a good job, I think people ought to know. And the hospital did just that for me. It is an asset to Southwest Mississippi.
And to those who avoid a colonoscopy for whatever reason: For all that cleansing the day before, it’s not that bad. Plus, it helps to know there’s no sign of colon cancer.
